Friday, February 26, 2010

You have until 6:00 PM Eastern time this evening to vote for Bucs Dugout or WHYGAVS in the Best Pittsburgh Sports Blog Championship! Scroll down two posts or click here to reach the voting screen. Two terrific Pirates blogs, but only one can win.

As a bit of a tangent, if we had a Best Pittsburgh Sports Video contest, who would win between Jim Shearer's Yinz Luv Da Stillers/Guins

Thursday, February 25, 2010

(If you're looking for the Championship of the Best Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament, please scroll down to the next post.)

I give up winter. You win! The record snowfall in the DC area has taken its toll, but it’s more than the snow. The bushes that line the one end of the driveway now take up part of the driveway. I’m not sure if they’ll ever go back to their previous position. However, it is the potholes that delivered the knockout blow on Monday night.

After leaving trivia night, I hit a massive pothole just before entering the Beltway immediately resulting in a loud clunking sound for each tire rotation. After having two flat tires in a span of one week last year, I thought I had another one. Actually, I hoped that it was just a flat tire though this sounded different. I pulled over but there was not enough light to see the damage. I drove another few blocks hoping that there would be a gas station to no avail, so I ended up pulling into a bus stop area off the main road. Although the tire looked and felt fine, I wasn’t chancing driving on the Beltway and I-66 (the worst road in America).

10:29pm – Called AAA. Spent 22 minutes on the phone because they could not determine where I was located. I thought I was on Wisconsin Avenue in Bethesda; however, it turns that the Beltway is the border between Bethesda and Rockville and the road changes its name to Rockville Pike. Who decided that roads need to change names every few miles in the DC area?

Other highlights of the call: - AAA operator attempting to spell Wisconsin starting with Wics and it got worse from there. - I explained nearly 20 times that I was next to the Grosvenor Metro station. I probably pronounced Grosvenor 20 different ways.

10:51pm – Finish phone call. Told a tow truck would be there by 11:30.

11:33pm – Call AAA. Truck will be there by 11:56.

11:50pm – Tow truck arrives.

11:55pm – In the process of attaching my car, a bus arrives but cannot get through because of the tow truck. Naturally, there was only one bus that stopped by during the 1+ hour I was already there.

Did you know that AAA tow trucks cannot divert from the GPS directions? Instead of going directly to the Beltway, the GPS had us go through a residential neighborhood before proceeding to the Beltway. According to the driver, he almost got reprimanded once for not following GPS directions that had him going the opposite way on a one-way street. Way too much Big Brother stuff going on there.

12:30am – Arrive at gas station/service station.

Around 12:50am – Arrive home.

It turned out that damage wasn’t nearly as bad as I feared. The service station straightened the left front wheel bead (I don’t know what this is) and replaced and balanced the tire which had an internal leak that could not be repaired.

I’m not sure if there’s much of a TMI in this TMI Thursday. If anything, I learned that if I’m going to be out unplanned until nearly 1:00AM, it’s best to call your wife to let her know the situation.

The other morale of the story is that we finished 2nd at trivia night!

For more TMI Thursdays, please visit LiLu and you can click here to see all of my TMI Thursday archives.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Somewhere, Doug Frobel, R.J. Reynolds, Dave Clark and Omar Moreno are smiling as two of the best Pittsburgh Pirates blogs, Where Have You Gone Andy Van Slyke (WHYGAVS) and Bucs Dugout, reached the Best Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament Championship. Actually, these four former Pirates probably don’t care about this tournament, but maybe they do. Perhaps they are regular readers of WHYGAVS, Bucs Dugout and the other blogs in the field of 32. So with that, who will join The Pensblog (last year's champion) as the Best Pittsburgh Sports Blog? The choice is up to you!

Championship voting starts now and ends on Friday, February 26 at 6:00 PM Eastern time. If you're new to the Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament (where have you been the past few weeks?), please click here to see the ground rules. In addition, while this may not be a realistic request, I ask that you please vote only once. This tournament is designed to be for fun and not a fight-to-the-death competition.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

(If you're looking for the Final Four round of the Best Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament, please scroll down to the next post.)

No time for an intro today. I'll explain more about my Monday evening/Tuesday morning another time.

1. Name the Commissioners of the four major sports (NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL)

2. What four word phrase starting with the letters SBDC is heard thousands of times in the DC area daily?

3. Finish this sentence: We're not the Beastie Boys or Run-DMC, we're just ___. (This sentence does not appear on Google, but for some reason, I remember this as part of an MTV promo from the late 1980s.)

4. What takes longer: cooking a burger on a George Foreman grill or cleaning the grill after cooking a burger?

5. Name four cast members of Jersey Shore.

6. Name four United States Supreme Court Justices.

7. What is the best song by the band Fuel? (There is an actual answer.)

8. Who was the last American male figure skater to win the gold metal prior to Evan Lysacek?

9. What city finished the #1 in Forbes.com's recent Most Miserable Cities in the U.S. list?

10. What was the principal's name in Ferris Bueller's Day Off?

As always, please leave your answers in the comments section below and do not use the internet to search for answers (except for #7). Good luck!

Monday, February 22, 2010

In last year’s inaugural Best Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament, I shared my disappointment that there were no Cinderellas as the top seeds in each bracket advanced to the Final Four. Well, there is no disappointment this year! Behind the Steel Curtain is the only #1 seed to make it this far. Where Have You Gone Andy Van Slyke isn’t a Cinderella as a #2 seed, but I think most figured that Mondesi’s House would rebound after reaching last year’s championship. Bucs Dugout faced a tough draw as a #3 seed and probably is a surprise in advancing to the Final Four. However, the real tournament shocker is #8 seed SteelersDepot.com that has a significant Twitter presence and following. If you followed Cory’s tournament odds and wagered on SteelersDepot.com to win the Moe Mantha Division, you would have made some good money.

Now that you’ve read the tournament summary, here is the Final Four bracket:

Voting for the Final Four round begins now and ends on Tuesday, February 23 at 8:00 PM Eastern time. If you're new to the Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament (where have you been?), please click here to see the ground rules. In addition, while this may not be a realistic request, I ask that you please vote only once per matchup. This tournament is designed to be for fun.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

The Final Four round of the Best Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament will take place Monday morning until Tuesday evening featuring Behind the Steel Curtain vs. Bucs Dugout and Where Have You Gone Andy Van Slyke vs. SteelersDepot.com. The winners of these match-ups will meet in the Championship on Wednesday morning through Friday afternoon.

For my regular readers (all three of you) missing my unique perspective of the world, you'll be happy to know that Trivia Tuesday will run on schedule this week on Wednesday. (Just kidding.) TMI Thursday may or may not run this Thursday, but I have some good ones to share over the next few weeks. Otherwise, I'm working on a few things but it's way too early to share.

What happens when a snow storm is blown out of proportion by the news media? This new film by Michael Bay documents the impact of a winter storm on Pittsburgh news reporters in the sequel to his blockbuster Armageddon.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

We are on to the Elite 8 round of the Best Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament. Whether real or perceived, there seems to be a good amount of discussion regarding apathy towards the Pittsburgh Pirates. However, with Spring Training about to begin, the Steelers season ending in early January and the Penguins on the Olympic break, the Pittsburgh Pirates blogs are the story of this tournament. That and the 7 vs. 8 seeds facing off in the Moe Mantha Division final.

The updated bracket:

Voting for the Elite 8 round begins now and ends on Friday, February 19 at 8:00 PM Eastern time. If you're new to the Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament, please click here to see the ground rules. In addition, while this may not be a realistic request, I ask that you please vote only once per matchup. This tournament is supposed to be for fun.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

(If you're looking for the Sweet 16 round of the Best Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament, please scroll down to the next post.)

With all of the snow we have received in the Washington area over the last few weeks, I have not attended trivia night in far too long. Hopefully we can remedy that next week. In the meantime, I present questions created by me (if you couldn’t tell).

1. Name three actors that were regulars on the sitcom Spin City.

2. For each of these actors, name another television show or movie that they appeared in.

3. Yesterday (Monday) was a Federal holiday. What is the name of this holiday in Virginia?

4. Name the four #1 seeds in the 2009 NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

5. Name a Samantha Fox song.

6. What Indiana Senator announced that he is not running for reelection?

7. Why did the fourth cauldron malfunction during the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics?

8. What event celebrating its 134th year is currently taking place in New York City?

9. What is the fourth largest U.S. state in terms of area?

10. What is the fourth most populous country in the world?

As always, please do not use the internet to search for answers and leave your answers in the comments section below. Good luck!

Monday, February 15, 2010

Before we begin the second round of the Best Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament, I want to touch on a few things from the first round.

1. Congratulations to SteelersDepot.com and Bucs Trade Winds for pulling off shocking upsets against #1 seeds Empty Netters and PSAMP respectively. It appears that both of these blogs deserved better than #8 seeds. In addition, congratulations to #7 seeds Igloo Dreams and Pittsburgh Lumber Co. for advancing to the Sweet 16. After last year’s tournament with few upsets and where all four #1 seeds made the Final Four, this year’s tournament is wide open (especially in the Moe Mantha division).

2a. I know that there have been some comments about why Black Shoe Diaries (BSD), a Penn State blog, is in the Pittsburgh sports blog tournament. Simply put, Penn State (particularly the football team) receives a significant amount of coverage by the Pittsburgh media. There are thousands of Penn State fans and alumni in Western Pennsylvania, so I thought they should be included. With that written, to the authors of BSD, please do me a favor and write a post about Steelers players that attended Penn State!

2b. I had no idea where to seed BSD, so I gave them a #4 seed. As it turned out, the match-up between BSD and BuccoFANS.com had the most votes for any match-up in the long and storied history of this tournament. Even though BuccoFANS.com has only been in existence for slightly more than a year, the blog has proven that it has a significant following and will be back strong next year.

3. It seems like fans of every sports team included in the tournament are united in their dislike of Bob Smizik. Personally, I don’t get it. Smizik knows the Pittsburgh sports community as well as anyone and this often comes across in his writing. I also think he writes posts just to get a reaction. Maybe I’m wrong, and I’m sure you will let me know this in the comments.

Here is the Sweet 16 bracket:

Voting for the Sweet 16 round begins now and ends on Wednesday, February 17 at 7:00 PM Eastern time. (This originally stated Tuesday, 2/16 @ 8:00 PM; due to the Presidents Day holiday, we're extending this round to Wednesday.) If you're new to the Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament, please click here to see the ground rules. In addition, while this may not be a realistic request, I ask that you please vote only once per matchup. Again, this is supposed to be fun.

Friday, February 12, 2010

Voting for the first round of the Best Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament concludes today (Friday) at 5:00 PM Eastern time. Please scroll down to vote. In the meantime, here is a new post that has nothing to do with the Tournament.

I recently received the following e-mail from the Pittsburgh Steelers:

The text might be small, but this e-mail invited me to the 2010 Easter Brunch and Easter Egg Hunt at Heinz Field. For only $27.95 (tax, administrative fees, and parking not included), I can have brunch and hunt for Easter eggs. I haven't been to an Easter egg hunt in many, many years, but I'm guessing they don't let adults search for the eggs. Therefore, I would attend for the opportunity to meet Steelers, right? For $27.95 plus fees, I expect that Mike Tomlin or some Steelers players would be in attendance. I'm not asking for Hines Ward or Troy Polamalu; Piotr Czech, Sean McHugh or Tony Hills would suffice. Um, no. It doesn't appear that any Steelers will attend. Instead, I can meet the Easter Bunny and Steely McBeam. I guess the food must be excellent!

Thursday, February 11, 2010

I do not condone gambling on the Best Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament, primarily because I don't think Vegas or anywhere else will accept your wagers. With that out of the way, Cory of Three Rivers Burgh Blog, a blog too new to compete this year but a likely lock to join the field next year, broke down this year's tournament.

Odd on winning it all

Empty Netters (1) – 3/1 – Seth is a machine at what he does. Coming up with Jersey Fouls was stuff that legends are made of. He has like 100 posts a day and they have meaningful stuff in them. I get one meaningful post in a month.

Mondesi’s House (1) – 7/2 – Cash money with all sports, not just the major ones. Gets a lot of college stuff. Good chance.

WHYGAVS (2) – 4/1 – Pat is on his stuff when it comes to the Pirates. If you really need some Pirates info you go to Pat or DK. Since DK isn’t in the tourney Pat is the top Pirates only guy

Behind the Steel Curtain (1) – 5/1 – Steelers only guy who has his head on straight. He comes up with like 100 things a day during the off season. He knows more about the Pitt punter we just signed than I know about myself.

The Confluence (2) - 5/1 – Tony is part of the KK menu, and does a great job. He is on top of all Penguins stuff but he is battling up against Seth who is also mainly Penguins. He is right up there and has a shot.

PensBurgh (2) – 11/2 – Pensburgh and Tony are right there hand in hand. Great Penguins coverage and they know their stuff about everything, not just stuff that has happened in the past five years. Major player.

PSAMP (1) – 6/1 – Seriously? Mini Ponies? Need I say more?

OFTOT (3) – 15/1 – Cotter just had a birthday so he is getting old. Steve does commercials for ESPN. ESPN does not have hockey. That hurts. Guilty by association.

Faceoff Factor (4) – 20/1 – Might be a sleeper. If he can get by Seth in the second round he has a chance.

Bucco FANS.com (5) – 30/1 – What a site. If you haven’t go to it. Individual Player pages for the Pirates and much more. Great site, and as a five seed he is another sleeper

Other – 100/1 – A buncha other great blogs, but I can’t put up odds for all of them. I do have a life. Ok, maybe I don’t but I still have to pretend to do something every once in a while.

You know I got much love for all of you guys. This was just all in good fun so I hope you don’t take offense to any of what I said in here. I read all your blogs and respect the hell out of you guys so you guys all win in my book. I put this together in like 10 minutes so I am sure it will resemble nothing what it should be. Deal with it. Good luck. I am voting for Three Rivers Burgh Blog anyways.

Voting for the first round of the Best Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament ends Friday at 5:00 and can be accessed by scroll down this page.

If you’re looking for the Best Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament, please scroll down the page to the next post.

Except for a brief trip to Wegmans on Monday (the roads were terrible), I have not left my home since Friday afternoon. I do not count shoveling snow as leaving my house. Anyway, I figured that I would share some of my experiences being stuck at home over the past week.

- My official wardrobe of snowpocalypse/snowmageddon has consisted of pajama pants, old T-shirts and my Pittsburgh Steelers slippers.

- I generally wear contacts every day. They have not left my container case since Friday.

- There have been days when I haven’t brushed my teeth until the mid-afternoon.

- I rediscovered Frasier, Spin City and The Bernie Mac Show.

- Ziggy sleeps all day. He’s wide awake every morning at 5:00 AM and feels that we should be awake too; however, at 10 in the morning or 2 in the afternoon, he’s out cold.

- Our new place has the warmest showers. After being outside in the cold shoveling snow, I’ve probably taken 15+ minute showers all week.

- The sauna-like showers may also explain why my hands are extremely dry.

- I’ve shared bathroom stories in the past, but I’m not going to today. Except the fact that I have a preference of one of our three toilets. In fact, I don’t think I’ve clogged this particular toilet.

- For the first time as an adult, I live in a complex that has trash pick-up. So, I took out the trash on Monday night only to watch it sit all day Tuesday. How hard is it to tell us that there was not going to be trash pick-up? I wasn’t alone as many of my neighbors also had their trash outside.

- I’ve started playing chess online. I used to be pretty good but I am extremely rusty and have lost 3 of my first 4 matches.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Welcome to the 2nd Annual Best Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament! This tournament is designed to highlight some of the best Pittsburgh sports blogs and bloggers. While the tournament is technically a competition, I hope that you'll consider this as something fun and a way to help pass the time since the Steelers season is over, the Penguins will be on the Olympic break and Spring Training for the Pirates is still a few weeks away. (At least we still have Pitt!)

Before we begin, I shared the ground rules to the BPSB Tournament last week. Please make sure you click on this link before you complain why certain blogs were not included. In addition, I do not have a definition of best. It's totally subjective. Now, please join Jim Nantz and me as we unveil the 2nd Annual BPSB Tournament bracket:

Despite writing a blog for over five years, I have few HTML or design skills. This is why the bracket looks like it was created in Word with no graphics. That's because it was created in Word with no graphics.

Voting for the first round begins now and runs through 5:00 PM Eastern time on Friday. While this may not be the most sophisticated voting software, I ask that you please vote only once per matchup. Again, this is supposed to be fun. If you want to campaign for a certain blog, please feel free to do so, but do not disparage or insult other blogs. The people who write these blogs spend hundreds of hours doing so and generally for little or no money.

With that, let's see who can join The PensBlog on becoming the Best Pittsburgh Sports Blog. Let the games begin!

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

With all of the snow we have received and are expected to get, I'm not sure if I'll ever attend trivia night again. Maybe in April. In the meantime, we have Sporcle quizzes.

1. Can you name the U.S. States (or D.C.) in which the 28 listed universities/schools are located? I scored a 27 but this is my wheelhouse. (I also scored a 30 out of 30 on the original "College States" quiz.)

2. Can you name the artists on the biggest and/or best 168 songs from 2000-2009? As a warning, this is 20 minute quiz. If you're stuck at home like me, this will help pass the time. In case you're wondering, I scored a 129 out of 168 on this one.

Bonus: Can you name the 41 artists with multiple U.S. #1 songs (including 'featuring' credits) from 2000-09? I struggled with this 10-minute quiz getting 24 correct.

As always, please leave your answers in the comments section below. Good luck!

Monday, February 08, 2010

I was snowed in yesterday so I had lots of time to watch television. Here are my thoughts on the Super Bowl and more:

- Enough of the Danica Patrick commercials! Does anyone really ever go up to her and ask if she’s the Go Daddy girl? Even if someone actually does this, no one rips their shirt open wearing a Go Daddy tank top in front of Patrick. If this really happens on a regular basis, Danica Patrick should have her own TV channel.

- The Super Bowl commercials were not very memorable. However, Doritos and Budweiser had some decent ads and seeing Betty White run a crossing pattern better than Limas Sweed* was fun.

- Congratulations to Dick LeBeau on his election to the football Hall of Fame! Well deserved even if it was 30 years late.

- Jerry Rice received the biggest ovation during the pre-game ceremony introducing the new Hall of Fame class. I guess people recognized him from Dancing With the Stars.

- While I still like the Puppy Bowl, it just wasn’t the same without Harry Kalas.

- As a Pittsburgh Penguins fan, I’m never going to like the Washington Capitals. However, this has nothing to do with the team itself. While I think Alexander Ovechkin takes cheap shots on occasion, he is amazing to watch on the ice. It’s easy to recognize that he is one of the best players in the world. My issue comes down to Capitals fans. There is no respect at all among Caps fans for Sidney Crosby. Caps fans must have noticed all of his goals during last season’s playoff series where he went straight to the net and took abuse and hits from the Caps defenders to score. Crosby had another two goals against the Caps yesterday. Keep bringing those pacifiers while showing your admiration towards Alexander Semin, Caps fans.

- Only two days until the 2nd Annual Best Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament!

* I feel bad making fun of Limas Sweed. I really hope he has a breakout season next year. Of course, breakout would be 10 catches.

Friday, February 05, 2010

I saw this story in the Express Thursday morning, but I'm copying this text from the Baltimore Sun:

Iran announced Wednesday it launched a menagerie of animals - including a mouse, two turtles and worms - into space on a research rocket, a feat President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said showed Iran could defeat the West in the battle of technology.

The brief article concludes with this:

To test a life-support system of use to humans, "the obvious choice would be to send a monkey," said James Lewis, senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Worms in space serve no purpose."

Am I the only person who thought that Iran got this wrong but for an entirely different reason than what James Lewis suggests? If you're going to send worms, turtles and a mouse into space, why not pigs?

For folks in the DC area, let's hope we make it through the Blizzard of the Decade!

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

The Best Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament went well last year, so I thought I would bring it back as an annual event. As I explained last year, my main motivation behind this tournament was to create a thorough list of the best blogs that cover and discuss Pittsburgh sports. There is a special Pittsburgh sports blog community that is unmatched by any other city in the country. That’s probably not surprising to Pittsburgh sports fans simply based on the huge percentage of households that watched the Super Bowl and Stanley Cup finals, all of the sports talk radio stations in Pittsburgh, and the success of the Pens, Steelers and Pitt over the past 12-13 months. Obviously, this translates to the significant number of blogs out there. This tournament is designed to highlight some of these blogs and bloggers and to encourage collaboration between very talented writers.

The tournament will begin next week, but I want to set the ground rules now and get some feedback about who should be included in this year’s tournament.

1. The blog must be in existence for at least one year. The bloggers in this tournament must have paid their dues. While it’s easy to start a blog, it’s not as easy to stick with it. This is not to discourage the new bloggers out there. There are some great blogs that have only been around for a few months that should make the cut next year.

2. The blog must discuss Pittsburgh sports at least half of the time. Close counts.

3. The blog must be active and updated regularly. I know that I should have a specific definition for regular, but I don’t. For example, Heels, Sox & Steelers, which was one of the top seeds last year, only had two total posts in May and June 2009. I’m considering this blog as out for this year.

4. The blog’s primary author cannot regularly write in a newspaper. This is the Dejan Kovacevic Rule as the PBC blog would likely win. I don’t want to diminish all of the work that Dejan and other writers/bloggers at the Post-Gazette and the Tribune-Review do but they also have much greater access to players, executives, etc.

5. At least for now, once your blog wins once, you can’t win again. The PensBlog cruised to a relatively easy victory to become the first ever Best Pittsburgh Sports Blog. They would likely repeat so let’s give some other blogs a chance. If there's a 10th annual Best Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament, maybe we'll bring back all the former champions.

Here’s the part where I ask for help. There will be 32 blogs in the tournament. The following blogs are definitely entered:

That is only 18 blogs. I have an idea about the remaining spots, but I’d like to hear who you think should be included. Please leave your suggestions in the comments section below or e-mail me at seanramblings at yahoo [dot] com.

Finally, I have three other questions for you to consider.

1. Should Black Shoe Diaries, a blog dedicated to Penn State, be a part of the Best Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament? State College is certainly not Pittsburgh, but there are a lot of Penn State fans in Western PA.

2. Should Bob Smizik’s blog be included in this year’s tournament? I’m leaning towards yes since he no longer writes for the print edition of the Post-Gazette, he blogs regularly and his blog has been around for at least one year.

3. Should Sean's Ramblings be part of the tournament? Please be honest with me. I feel like I have a decent following but I'm not sure if I write about Pittsburgh sports at least half of the time. Plus, even though I would be a #7 or #8 seed, this is a bit of a home-field advantage.

Thanks for reading and supporting the Pittsburgh sports blog community! In addition, thanks to Cotter for designing the logo which is especially appropriate with the upcoming Winter Olympics.

Update: The first round of the tournament will begin on Wednesday, February 10th.

Sean's Ramblings Is Everywhere

About Me

Welcome to Sean's Ramblings! If you're looking for thoughts on pop culture, music, fun and informative links, random DC and Pittsburgh info, sports (particularly Pittsburgh sports), and just what's going on in my life, then you're come to the right place.
Any questions, comments or links? Contact me at seanramblings[at]yahoo[dot]com.